Behind A Diagnosis of March Madness

For devoted college sports fans, the NCAA tournament isn't just about the game; it's about the story of their lives

By

Eric Simons

March 29, 2013 7:47 p.m. ET

From the point of view of a non-sports-fan, March Madness looks like the month when many people actually go mad. Fans parade by in crazy hats and face paint. You go to a nice cafe for lunch and some other diner screams "Go Orange!" for Syracuse University—and instead of getting escorted from the premises is joined by a dozen other fans who look up and chant in unison, "Go Orange!" Strangers on the street ask what you think about something called Florida Gulf Coast University. As the comedian Michael Ian Black wrote last week on Twitter, March Madness "is the time of year when I don't understand anything that's happening in my country."

March Madness is fun even for the casual fan, of course, because of its action and drama and the chance of winning big in the office betting pool. But for the team fanatic, there is more: a very real and emotionally satisfying relationship.

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Technically, it is not a "relationship," which would require reciprocity and mutual interest. But sports fandom shares crucial features of an interpersonal relationship, says State University of New York Stony Brook psychologist Arthur Aron. It involves, he says, the "inclusion of the other in the self." In intimate relationships, this means that the other person's triumphs and failures become your triumphs and failures. Psychologists call this blending of minds "self expansion."

In an experiment pioneered by Dr. Aron and repeated in labs around the world, participants are shown a list of personal characteristics and asked to press a button to say which ones are or are not true of themselves. People in relationships are fast to press the button when the trait is true or not true of both themselves and their partner. When the two don't match, however, they tend to stumble, pausing to recall which person has that characteristic.

In sports fans, you see this same sort of mind meld when they use the word "we" to describe a group of players who, in a personal sense, are complete strangers to them. And in sports, as opposed to ordinary life, there are much more visible ways to identify with the beloved "other." A professional team offers a few adoptable traits: a color scheme, a regional affiliation, maybe a mascot that can help to define your personal style.

A savvy team can take on more nuanced identities too. Oakland Raiders former owner Al Davis had repeated clashes with the National Football League, which moved many fans to profess their appreciation for misfits, rebels and the Jolly Roger; Tim Tebow's testimonials of Christian faith have appealed to evangelical fans far beyond Denver and the Meadowlands.

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But a college team offers far more: not just the colors, the region and the mascot but educational values, professional ties, group and community associations, old friends and memories. College has become the place where young Americans go to establish who they are for the rest of their lives, so it makes sense that a college team offers a deeper, more fulfilling relationship than a casual flirtation with teal and a skating shark. College teams represent the wealth of a university experience and can create fans from people who will never have an interest in professional sports.

There is even some evidence of a physical dimension to how fans identify with their teams. When men are involved in direct competition, their testosterone levels rise with wins and fall with losses, and this may carry over to strong identification with a team. A study of the 1994 World Cup final, in which Brazil defeated Italy, showed higher levels of testosterone among the victorious Brazilian fans and lower levels among the disappointed Italians (though research on fans watching the 2010 World Cup did not turn up the same results).

Given a national stage every March, this heady mix of hormones, pride, love and self-esteem makes the NCAA tournament a uniquely meaningful occasion in American sports. In 2007, one particularly passionate sports lover in Cleveland started a blog called "My Teams Are Cursed," posting hundreds of entries about his sorry fate as a fan. When his college team, the Kansas Jayhawks, won the NCAA tournament nine months later, he posted a video of fans in Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence reacting to the game-winning shot—and then he never posted to his blog again. He compared the experience of his team's victory to a purifying exorcism.

So the patrons of your local cafe who shout "Go Orange!" to each other are not just cheering on their team. They are reminding each other of shared attachments to Syracuse and their time there: friends, romances, classes, careers and aspirations. Joining that refrain is nothing less than a way to mark out their place in the universe and in the relentless flow of time. As for those outside the charmed circle of college fandom, good luck navigating by the stars of March Madness.

—Mr. Simons is the author of "The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession," to be published Thursday by the Overlook Press.

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